It’s all happening

Iowa! It’s cold and snowy, the candidates are all over the place, the journalists are mostly headquartered at the dowtown Marriott. It’s reminiscent of the Riot House as depicted in “Almost Famous,” or the second half of “Less Than Zero,” when the whole party decamped from LA to Palm Springs. Without the hard drugs and rampant decadence, though. Worky, worky.

An AP/Yahoo News poll (Yahoo? Polling? Ok) finds a deep ambivalence among Republican voters, with four in 10 saying they have switched candidates in the past month alone, and nearly two-thirds say they may change their minds again.

The Democratic side is less chaotic, with Hillary Rodham Clinton maintaining a clear lead nationally over Barack Obama, though voters are still doing plenty of shifting. About one in five backs a different contender than in November, and nearly half say they still may settle on someone else.

National polls are almost completely useless at this point, except for measuring this kind of uncertainty.

Remember when Hillary Clinton told Katie Couric “It will be me” for the nomination? Ha! New tune: “I don’t know what is going to happen on January 3rd, and I don’t think anybody does,” she told the Des Moines Register this week.

Gossip from Iowa: Reporters and photogs are talking about how inexperienced Mike Huckabee’s campaign handlers are — with too-small venues for the crowds he’s drawing and poor logistical organization. Also a subject of wonder: Suddenly, everyone is calling Mitt Romney on his phoniness, but no one is calling out John Edwards?